A Sarcastic Look at Usual Interpretations of the StoryPosted August 10, 2008 at Teachnology

What impresses me most among recent posts here is the one by a 12-year-old who wrote, "I don't think she should shoot him because they might be the last human beans on the planet....You need to socialize."

The rest of you are hopeless--happy in your simplistically moralistic universe of clearcut "good" and "evil," blissfully ignoring any evidence to the contrary no matter how it is explained to you.

Oh, well. Perhaps sarcasm would be more effective.

Ann is a saint. Loomis is an evil sociopath. This should be perfectly obvious to everyone, and I can prove it no matter what anyone else says.

It's true that when Ann sees Loomis approach, she hides in fear of a man she hasn't even met and has no cause yet to fear. But that is not paranoia; it's perfectly reasonable to expect the worst of strangers.

When Loomis takes off his mask and shouts out, "Haaay," like someone cheering at a ball game (22), seemingly full of hope to hear another human voice, his cry is actually the maniacal one of a twisted, unemotional, psychotic sociopath.

Ann feels a powerful urge to answer Loomis's call, run to him, cry, and touch his face (23), but it's a darned good thing she suppresses such dangerous emotions as the desire for human companionship. He might've killed or enslaved her right then. It's much better that she let him be answered by silence.

To ensure her own safety, Ann does nothing to stop this potentially evil stranger from bathing in a radioactive stream. So, what? She is not to blame for this at all; she has to look out for number one. It's not the same as shooting someone who's trying to take equipment that is the only means of survival. Loomis is clearly a selfish, murdering devil.

When Loomis then gets radiation sickness as a result, Ann shows her amazing kindness when she decides to care for him. Sure, she waits 3 days while making excuses to herself that she "can't be sure" the stream is deadly (complete absence of life in it might mean nothing, after all); and then she has a sudden desperate fear that the stranger is the last man and she will be alone forever if he dies (45). But her motives for helping him are still completely altruistic, and she's absolutely right to blame him in the end because he never thanked her for helping him. Yes, she later thinks that her last words to Loomis were "childish" (248), but she's obviously wrong in thinking anything negative about herself. It's true that right after Loomis swims in the creek Ann worries because she thinks she "could have stopped him" (26); and later she reveals guilt feelings, telling Loomis, "I wish I had warned you" (101). But she is obviously silly to feel this way and not at all responsible for what happened. It just shows how good she is that she even feels guilty for something that wasn't remotely her fault. As she says, she couldn't possibly have prevented what happened unless she had risked her life by showing herself (26)!

Loomis knows he could be facing death, yet he remains calm and doesn't blame Ann at all for what happened; he just blames himself for being careless. But this doesn't show he is reasonable, fair, or emotionally well-balanced. He must be crazy.

Ann is impressed y Loomis's calmness in the face of death and thinks she herself would be hysterical (52). But this doesn't mean Loomis's rationality should be admired. On the contrary, we approve much more of people who tend to react emotionally and panic in a crisis. Everyone knows that reason and self-control are very bad.

Though Ann hides in a cave in fear of Loomis on May 26th, a few days later on June 3rd she thinks there's no reason they couldn't get married in a year (81). But this is not silly, irrational, or deluded, indicative of a weak grasp of reality or an overactive imagination. Rather, Ann is just a normally reasonable 16-year-old and much more sensible really than a scientist about twice her age could be expected to be. Ann nurses Loomis for a month (from late May until late June), at first feeling thrilled to have company again (54-55). She dresses up for him (55), cooks him healthy meals that he thinks are "Amazing" (55, 68), takes pride in helping him (71), and watches a sunset with him as he rests his hand on her shoulder for support (71). She offers to play the piano for him, which makes him seem extremely pleased, almost excited" (73); and afterwards he thanks her, saying, "This is the best evening I ever spent" (74). She dreams of marrying Loomis and having children, and she makes a bouquet of apple blossoms for his sickroom (81). He asks to go fishing with her, and she offers to show him how to do it (85). She tries to create a romantic dinner atmosphere, regretting she took her candles to the cave because oil lamps "did not look as romantic" (88). She stays close by him during the worst stages of his fever, washing his sweat-soaked pajamas and providing clean ones (108), rubbing his body with handkerchiefs soaked in alcohol (110), comforting him in his delirious fears and nightmares about Edward (112), changing his pajamas and bedsheets for him (130), and feeding him when he starts to recover (134). Later, he tells her that her piano-playing stopped a feeling that he was "floating away" (138), suggesting that her companionship saved his life; and when he first says he heard her playing, she feels like hugging him (137).

BUT WHY WOULD LOOMIS FEEL ANY ATTACHMENT TO ANN, OR PRESUME THAT SHE MIGHT FEEL ANY AFFECTION FOR HIM? That's ridiculous. Aside from her private imaginings about marrying him, and maybe dressing nicely sometimes, and the occasional romantic dinner atmosphere, playing the piano for him, and changing his clothes, none of her behaviour could possibly suggest she feels any intimacy with him. A shared sunset is nothing special, and walking to the pond together to go fishing is nothing like a date. Whatever romantic feelings she actually had, she hid them so well that he could never have suspected anything. It's true that Ann represses or hides her feelings much of the time, and sometimes this is clearly due to fear for her own safety. When Loomis first arrives in the valley and calls out, she represses a strong desire to answer and run to him (23). When the dog Faro finds Ann's hiding place, she doesn't hug him the way she feels like doing because she fears Faro will betray her (35). When Loomis says an evening with her playing the piano was the best he'd ever had, she says, "You mean since the war" (74), as if she's afraid to accept openly any feeling of intimacy between them. She wishes they could get married, but she can't bring herself to tell him her feelings (101). When he starts recovering from his fever and says he heard her play piano, she wants to hug him; but she represses the temptation and just sits down by his bed instead (137). When she hears Loomis taking his first steps again, she feels like running into his room and applauding; but she restrains her impulse, telling herself that he doesn't want her approval (147). But Ann is absolutely RIGHT to control her feelings in all these instances, and the results are much better than they would have been if she'd done otherwise! Just imagine. If she'd run to Loomis when he first called out, they might have felt happy right away to find companionship again, and Loomis never would have gone swimming in the poisoned creek. If she'd cared more about her feelings for Faro than her own safety, it could have weakened her by making her trust feelings of affection at other times also, like when Loomis said he'd had the best evening ever. She might've thanked him for the compliment and said she felt the same way, with no doubt disastrous consequences. Think of how horribly quickly they could have become close if Ann had told Loomis her hopes to marry him, or if she'd allowed herself to hug him when he was recovering from fever. Yes, it is much better to repress potentially harmful affection for others and instead indulge really beneficial feelings like FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN or FEAR OF POTENTIAL ENEMIES. One might think that a scientist like Loomis would know what he's talking about when he says that it's against the odds for a "meteorological enclave" like the valley to exist (56). But we shouldn't give any credit at all to his opinion. When Ann later has a dream about children waiting for her in another valley, that is much more reliable. Also, it's not important that Ann's family went in the same direction as she does (south and west), or that Loomis travelled ten weeks across the country, finding "no living thing--no people, no animals, no trees, not even insects--only gray wasteland, empty highways, and dead cities and towns" (57). That's no reason at all for Ann not to trust her dreams and be hopeful.

Oh, yes. And the story is clearly "anti-science" because Loomis is a scientist and he's entirely evil. Also, everything to do with science is shown to be evil. Like the tractor, the guns, the safesuit, and the waterwheel Loomis designs to generate electricity. Evil. Evil. Evil. Admittedly, Ann is "really glad" when Loomis tells her how to get gas for the tractor (71); she's a good shot with a gun and uses one to defend herself; when Loomis designs a waterwheel generator, Ann thinks "It would be nice to have a refrigerator again" (84); and Ann ends up using the safesuit herself to leave the valley. But that doesn't mean any of this technology is beneficial. If Loomis has anything to do with it, it must be inherently evil. I've also heard that some people think evils such as human conflict tend to result from faults of human nature, or from people's failures to understand one another; but that's silly. The real problem is just that science and technology are evil and ruinous in themselves. And science must also be evil because it's against religion, which is why Loomis doesn't go to church.We know that there could be other survivors of the war in other miraculously protected valleys because Ann has dreams about children somewhere waiting for a teacher. Sure, these could be wishful imaginings caused by the extreme conditions of living in the wilderness and fearing that she can't survive any longer in her own valley; but surely these particular dreams must be true. We can just tell that they are special visions, particularly since Ann is a nice Christian person suffering unjustly and deserves to be helped in some supernatural way.

It's true she had different dreams before in different situations, but those dreams weren't really meaningful. For example, her hopes and dreams all year that a man would come to the valley and they could raise a family together (36). Or the dream "that it was [her] father in the tent, sick, and then that her whole family were there again, in the house" (44), which made her realize her loneliness and start fearing that Loomis might die. That dream wasn't important, and it certainly didn't suggest any connection between Loomis and having a family again. Or her happy daydream next to the crab-apple tree about marrying Loomis the following year and having children together. We shouldn't think of that as a good dream, either. Obviously, it's much better that she puts all her hope in a dream valley rather than the miraculous one she's already in, and that she goes looking for people in dreams instead of working on a relationship with the last man whose existence is certain.

This mainly just deals with the first half of the book. More sarcasm later maybe.

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